Suggest good motherboard for my PC

[getstarted]

I am planning to build a PC for educational purpose. I am going to VSTS, CS3, RAID for my software projects.

Here is the hardware I gathered so far:

Antec 300 Case
AMD 5000+ Processor
1TB Hard Drive (Do I need two hard drives for RAID setup?)
Antec 430 PS
4GB RAM
Windows 2008 Server OS

I think I have everything except motherboard to build a PC. Let me know if I miss anything. Please suggest a suitable motherboard?

-I dont intend to use as HTPC, but if the price is not a big difference, I would go for MB with onboard graphics card.
-I am not going to use it for games

 

[o1die]

Newegg has an ecs board with 780g chipset for around $70 plus shipping. If you don't plan on overclocking, it should work fine for you. The 790 is the newest chipset, but costs too much.

 

[jagzc]

can any one help me out ?

im trying to put a new pc together ( its been a while now) im going from a AMD 4200, 1 gig ram, GA-K8N Pro-SLI. GF6800gs xxx

now i wana got up to a Q6600, Gigabyte GA-X48-DS5, X48 , OCZ 2X2GBKIT REAPER 240PIN PC2-6400 DDR2 800MH and i have the 8800gts Fatality.
do think the mobo is good choice. this will be a gaming PC.

any thoughts ?

 

[DSF]

Originally posted by: jagzc
can any one help me out ?

im trying to put a new pc together ( its been a while now) im going from a AMD 4200, 1 gig ram, GA-K8N Pro-SLI. GF6800gs xxx

now i wana got up to a Q6600, Gigabyte GA-X48-DS5, X48 , OCZ 2X2GBKIT REAPER 240PIN PC2-6400 DDR2 800MH and i have the 8800gts Fatality.
do think the mobo is good choice. this will be a gaming PC.

any thoughts ?

Read the stickies in General Hardware. The one by modoheo has good parts information, and the one by Blain will give you a template for a new thread of your own. Post that new thread in General Hardware. There's no reason to hijack getstarted's thread, as your topic is really quite different.


As to the OP:

You need two or more drives for RAID. RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks or Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks depending on who you ask. Having more than one drive is what provides the redundancy.

What are you hoping to gain from RAID? There are a number of different types of RAID, each with their own benefits and costs.

If you buy a motherboard without integrated video you'll need a video card, unless you're intending this to be a headless server. I would actually strongly suggest you do the same thing I recommended jagzc - start a thread in General Hardware answering the questions in Blain's sticky. It seems you have more questions than just the motherboard.

 

[krnmastersgt]

OP: o1die's suggestion is pretty solid since it has the integrated graphics as well.

jagzc: It's a bit overkill for a motherboard, the X48's main difference from the P45 chipset (both intel) would be that X48 is meant for multiple cards, only in Crossfire however. It's a good board, no doubt, but it costs quite a bit of money and you're only running 1 8800 so it's money that would be wasted. Look for a P45 board from Gigabyte and you'd be pretty much set.

As for the cpu, I'd suggest an E8500 instead of the Q6600, much better for gaming.

As for that vid card, the Fatality branding really doesn't do anything but make it cost more, I'd suggest just get a regular 8800 GTS 512mb from EVGA or XFX and save yourself some money. Or a 9600 GT, 3870, 9800 GT.

 

[tcsenter]

Server 2008 drivers might be a problem for some chipsets, particularly 64-bit Server 2008. Though you can manually install the Vista drivers after extracting them from the installer package, it will break the digital signature and 64-bit Server 2008/Vista aren't too keen on unsigned drivers being installed. There may be a work-around to get unsigned drivers to install on 64-bit Server 2008/Vista, I'm not sure.